The Brewton Berry's Model Of Assimilation

Several years ago, America was taught to be a 'melting pot,' a place where immigrants of different cultures or races form an integrated society, but now America is more of a 'salad bowl' where instead of forming an incorporated entity the people who make up the bowl are unwilling to unite as one. America started as an immigrant nation and has continued to be so. People all over the world come to America for several reasons. Most people come to America voluntarily, but very few come unwillingly. For whatever reasons they may have for coming they all have to face exposure to American society. When exposed to this 'new' society they choose whether to assimilate or not. Assimilation

In Milton Gordon’s, “Assimilation in America”, theorizes that there is a “3” stage process of assimilation; acculturation (cultural assimilation), integration (structural assimilation), intermarriage (marital assimilation). However, it is actually 7 stages, but for simplicity will refer to as 3 stages. The overall process seems to follow the theory of Anglo-conformity, in which immigrants “assume the desirability of maintaining English institutions, the English language, and English-oriented cultural patterns as dominant and standard in American life” (265).

Race and gender are two facets that inherently dominate individuals everyday lives. A person’s social environment, work environment, and educational environment is congruent to their race and gender. From birth, it has been set up that everyone is assigned to a label. A pink or blue blanket is swaddled around a newborn child and a box is checked signifying that child’s place in society. These two actions ultimately define how a child is to be viewed and treated. As children grow into young adults they either decide to stick with their original assignment, while others decide to deviate from it. These individuals deviation results in many of them being viewed harshly and looked down upon because they strayed from their social norms. This constant cycle of being classified and labeled from birth is the social institution of gender and race. These social institutions aid in the inequality that is present in society, and race and gender are shaped by this. However, if these social institutions were removed, race and gender could dissipate. This is due to the fact that race and gender are not real, but are socially constructed concepts used to organize the power, or dominance, within our society to one social group over the other groups.

The maintenance of one’s ethnic ties in a way that can assist with assimilation in larger society is known as

The organizations that would take over other beings and cause them to lose their identity to become a slave to the larger organization. However, Assimilation often associated with a negative connotation with the loss of one’s identity or historical culture as part of an integration process with a new, larger cultural identity. This negative connotation therefore raises racial and cultural identity concerns at the mere mention of the term, which results in a loss of the positive connotations of assimilation and loss of the perspective that assimilation does not require the loss of individual identity. The people involved still retain their individual identities, hopes, dreams, interests, loves, and goals, but they also can function more successfully

20. The maintenance of one’s ethnic ties in a way that can assist with assimilation in larger society is known as

Assimilation is the forced action to adapt or adjust to the culture and values of another nation. This, in many cases throughout history, has been the result of a more powerful, majority group suffocating the minority. Conformity has been a very popular trait in the colonial Canadian society. By exercising this value over successive decades, European immigrants smothered much of the Indigenous culture.

Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou introduced the concept of segmented assimilation, which stressed a three-part path: assimilation for those with advantages in human capital, an ethnic disadvantage for some because of poverty and racialization, and the selective retention of ethnicity for yet others. Assessing present levels of assimilation among today's immigrant groups requires considering the possibility that the process itself may be changing. To ascertain this, we must first understand three major theories of immigrant and ethnic-group integration. The theories are the classic and new assimilation models, the racial/ethnic disadvantage model, and the segmented assimilation model. One of the general, classic assimilation theory sees immigrant/ethnic

As a consequence, the nature of assimilation – historically a conflicting process for Southwestern Anglos and Mexican-Americans – is likely to become less a matter of conformity to Anglo socials norms and more a process of cultural pluralism.

The value of assimilation,which emphasizes the idea of adapting to a new culture especially in the American society, should not be considered a solution to restoring the unity of people in America. Diversity has already done that job by bringing together different cultures and encouraging them to share their own uniqueness.

Pluralism is when society consists of a variance of people; however, people stay in groups in which they can identify themselves with causing culture differences to live on. Pluralism is different than assimilation significantly. This is because pluralism is when people group themselves with similar people to keep living their unique cultural lifestyle and assimilation is when people of unique cultures conform to the culture that surrounds them (48). Rather than promoting the blend of culture, the idea of assimilation, also called Americanization, in the past ensured the English language would thrive and the early institutions would remain for years to come (48-49). This varies to pluralism which welcomes the idea of racial, ethnic and cultural differences.

Immigrants (and other ethno-cultural groups) who wish to maintain their heritage culture and identity while integrating in the larger receiving society, are dependent on the acculturation strategy of the latter. When the strategy of the receiving society is pluralistic (multiculturalism), acculturation is experienced by the immigrants as a positive process. They are free to monitor the extent of their integration. However, when the receiving society adopts the strategy of a "melting pot", immigrants are expected to assimilate. Being urged to give up their old customs and language in favor of the new ones, immigrants may experience acculturation as stressful.

Assimilation, diffusion and multiculturalism are terms that are often applied to shape our culture. These terms have positive and also negative impacts on our life. Assimilation is the process happens where members of a minority group begin to lose their own ideas and take on the cultural characteristics of the majority. It can be applied on a small and large scale. Cultural assimilation occurs when a person immigrates into another country and drops his or her own culture to learn new country's language, integrates into society. Another example of assimilation can be shown in Canada; it happened when residential schools that existed in Canada took young First Nations and tried to assimilate them

Acculturation is known as a cultural change and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures at multiple levels in both interacting cultures. It has also been referred to the changes in personal values, beliefs, behaviours, and ways of living that an immigrant or minority individual makes as a result of adapting to the mainstream cultural or behavioural norms (Berry, Kim, Minde, & Mok, 1987). Acculturation often results in changes to culture, customs, and social institutions. In this modern era, through technology and media, people have been constantly engaging online to learn and understand new cultures, norms and languages. Acculturation is more than simply learning the English language, but also understanding the history of a new country, navigating its idioms and understanding the concepts behind its holidays.

The two processes that are involved in every interaction are assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation means gaining some knowledge and making it fit in with what you already know. This is a necessity in order to develop our cognitive structures. This is a process that everyone encounters even though they may not be aware of when it is happening. Our perceptions of things are enhanced when something of the outside world is assimilated or added into our internal world. Accommodation is the changing of one’s structure of thought. During this process, the gaining of new knowledge fails to co-exist with what we already know. Therefore, we must accommodate or adjust our